To get words done Isaac Asimov Michael Crichton remain the role models of solid writing production. If you want to learn what skills you need to write a lot, you have to look at those who have written a lot. Since there are no off the rack solutions, you are going to have to compare some of them to get an idea of what common ground they share that I could use. I have found the most useful writing tools by looking at writers I like and comparing their processes.
Two of my favorite writers are Isaac Asimov and Michael Crichton. On the surface they seem very different in how they wrote. Crichton worked in intense periods for each project with breaks between, while Asimov is famous for not doing anything else other than writing. Asimov wrote in fiction and non-fiction. Crichton really focused on fiction.
Yet it is not their difference that made them produce so much. Nor are those differences the reason they were ultimately successful.
Love and Critics
The first key reason really comes down to the fact that they both loved their work. You have to love your work or it will not fly. Somerset Maugham once said that “Books can’t matter much if their authors themselves don’t think they matter.” A Writer’s Notebook
The second reason is they did not listen to the critics or even the inner one we all have. They listened instead to their own voice.
Asimov’s Process
Asimov worked large chunks of time every day. What he felt like did not matter. He got to work. He used a very minimalist straight forward approach in his writing style. His critics sometimes even complained on how clean he wrote. James Gunn described I Robot as :
“Except for two stories [of Asimov]—”Liar!” and “Evidence”—they are not stories in which character plays a significant part. Virtually all plot develops in conversation with little if any action. Nor is there a great deal of local color or description of any kind. The dialogue is, at best, functional and the style is, at best, transparent… The robot stories and, as a matter of fact, almost all Asimov fiction—play themselves on a relatively bare stage.”
Asimov himself was not offended. His writing is much like Ernest Hemingway’s. Asimov himself said:
“I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.”
Asimov wrote in the flow, often producing books in just one draft. He said that when he found a point where he could not find a solution he chose to not resist those sticking points by just plowing through, but instead he moved on to something else till his brain could formulate an answer. This is why he worked with so many typewriters at one time. Moving gave his brain a rest so that he could more quickly find solutions.
Crichton’s Process
Crichton worked in a start and stop process on one project. He tended to work in flowing times like a maniac, from an organized outline, and often using plots out of Victorian era writing and was known to shift his work days around, by getting up earlier in the mornings, to keep the inner resistance down long enough to complete the work.
Crichton’s critics claimed he lacked anything literary. Bruce Cook said Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery was “written directly with the requirements of the screen in mind” and said “never really gets inside his characters.” Science Fiction author Greg Bear said Jurassic Park had “excitement in large quantities”, predicting that it would “make a terrific movie.” But he did not like Ian Malcolm’s “extended philosophizing” on chaos theory. “Long before Malcolm has his say, this reader, at least, was hoping for some more dinosaurs to put him out of his misery.”
What They Share
Asimov and Crichton’s work was not about tomorrow or yesterday. It was what they did today that mattered. Both focused was the work while ignoring the wait for the muse. They were the soul mates with many of the more prolific writers of the late eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Somerset Maugham pointed out that loving your writing is the most important aspect of your work.
“A prolific writer, therefore, has to have self assurance. He can’t sit around doubting the quality of his writing. Rather, he has to love his own writing… If I didn’t enjoy my writing so much, how on earth could I stand all the writing I do?”
Writer’s Secret
Both writers knew the secret was to read, learn, then Steal like an artist.
Asimov read volumes over a wide variety of subjects, much of which he used for grist in his works. Crichton read volumes, but his main source for plots was Victorian books that he used to create his stories. Asimov admitted books gave him both information and inspiration.
Writing is an act of faith, but every writer uses the muse. They act and the muse comes. That’s the faith. As Maugham said, “Fortunately, inspiration strikes every day at 9 o’clock.” Both writers knew and practiced this as well. You show up and start putting words on the page and things happen. Somewhere along the line the muse has to kick in. She can’t let you have all the fun.
A Time to Start
Depending on the time of his life, Asimov would start at 9 or 9:30 am then work to 9pm. Toward the end of his years, he would start at 8am and work to 10pm. When he was still a working professor, he would work around university lecture times with set writing periods. He worked every day, even on vacation with pen and paper instead of his normal typewriter.
Crichton got to work at set times as well, though he often changed the times to start earlier as the project developed so he would not lose the momentum of the previous day. This lead him famously on one project to rise so early that it drove his wife nuts. His solution was to check into the Kona Village where he worked round the clock till he finished his work.
Slaying the Inner Critic
Each had his own way to tackle his inner and outer critic. They knew the real critic they were fighting was the inner one.
Asimov tended to fight this voice by not fighting it when stuck. That’s why he, like so many writers, tended to have multiple projects simultaneously in play at various stages. When stuck with one, the writer can move on to another. In Asimov’s case he went this one better by having a separate typewriter set up for each project being worked on. He wisely knew if the work was ready, he would need no setup time. He could just start steam rolling over that inner urge to stop the instant he sat down.
“I don’t stare at blank sheets of paper. I don’t spend days and nights cudgeling a head that is empty of ideas. Instead, I simply leave the novel and go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap. I write an editorial, or an essay, or a short story, or work on one of my nonfiction books. By the time I’ve grown tired of these things, my mind has been able to do its proper work and fill up again. I return to my novel and find myself able to write easily once more.”
Crichton’s momentum effort may have been hell on his household, but it did not fall down in self-destruction either.
Distractions Are Evil.
Asimov worked to remove the distraction in his life. He hated everything that kept him from writing, and even once commented about being forced to go on vacation. Another time he remarked that he hated sunny days because people used them as an excuse not to get words down. He also used this trait to make his writing more prolific in his editing process. As Asimov said:
“If I had the critic’s mentality (which I emphatically don’t), I would sit down and try to analyze my stories, work out the factors that make some more successful than others cultivate those factors, and simply explode with excellence. But the devil with that. I won’t buy success at the price of self-consciousness. I don’t have the temperament for it. I’ll write as I please and let the critics do the analyzing.”
For Asimov the editing work was done in his mind before he put words to the page. Much of his later work is pure first draft flow, as far as the paper is concerned. No one has any clue as to how many drafts he went through in his head before he set his fingers on the keys. He wrote with clarity of mind first then did not question what he wrote when he typed.
Asimov’s Memory
Remember Asimov is unique among modern writers for using mental reflection to write first then type out the finished copy. He really was sitting down with finished work when he typed all the time.
In How to Enjoy Writing, written with his wife, the pair recalled an example of his ability to do all of his work in his head then type it. Janet woke at 4 am and found Isaac wide awake. She asked if he was troubled and found that he had been awake for a couple of hours because he had woken up with an idea for his next Black Widower’s story. Amazed he was still in bed, she had told him to “Write it down.” But an unfazed Isaac said “I’m going back to sleep.” Janet told him that would mean he would not remember it later. Isaac told her “I will” and he did. He might not have stood out in the ancient days when the writers of ancient Greece remembered virtually everything, but Asimov likely owes a great deal to his flow writing to having cultivated this ability.
“For one thing, I don’t write only when I’m writing. Whenever I’m away from my typewriter- eating, falling asleep, performing my ablutions- my mind keeps working… That’s why I’m always ready to write. Everything is, in a sense, already written. I can just sit down and type it all out”
His ideas were the result of his “…thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to kill myself.” Isaac Asimov, A Memoir
Oats on Distractions
Joyce Carol Oats remarked that distraction is the greatest enemy of writing. We tend to think we are writing for five hours but in reality the interruptions from family and friends really make it closer to half an hour. Asimov was the poster boy for the possible end game on that.
Asimov Spartan
In later life Asimov lived in a suite. In it he had three main things. Five IBM Selectric typewriters, about 1000 books, 9 projects in various stages and his most prized view behind some drapes, a brick wall. He did not even have a kitchen to divert at meal times. He had his meals brought in.
That may be a little Spartan for some, but the lack of distraction is likely why he did not feel any loss when he sat down at 8am and did not quit till 10pm. He was not joking as much as honest when he once quipped, “I work whenever I am not doing anything else and I don’t like to do anything else.”
Asimov had much in common with many writers, even Steven king used a small secluded cubby area with a skylight, allowing form much needed light and cutting out far less desired distractions.
“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” ~ Stephen King, On Writing
Wrapping Up
For all writers everything is about evolving change, when it comes to our writing. We work constantly to purify our own processes to deal with distractions, critics, momentum, organization, the craft and work of writing, but of them all the things we deal with the most important part is the love of the work itself. You have to love what you write or the rest of it will not really matter much to anyone.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash